A/Cpl 29154 Joachim John McEachern

• Age: 28
• From: Prince Edward Island, Canada
• Regiment: The King's (Liverpool Regiment) 20th Btn
• K.I.A Monday 10th July 1916
• Commemorated at: Thiepval Memorial
  Panel Ref: P&F1D8B &8 C.

Joachim was born at Prince Edward Island, Canada on 17^th September 1887  the youngest son of Bennett McEachern and his wife Flora (nee Gillis) who married in Prince Edward Island in 1881. Joachim was baptised on 18^th September 1887 in Souris, Prince Edward Island, Canada. 

His father was born in Prince Edward Island, and was about 50 years old when Joachim was born; his mother was born in Scotland; her family had emigrated to Canada in 1843 and like many of those of Scots descent in Prince Edward Island, she spoke Gaelic. His father was a civil servant and appears for many years on Canada’s Civil Servants List. There appears to be an older half- brother, Ambrose, who married and moved to Maine when Joachim was about 5.

In April 1891 the Canada census shows parents with children Mary, Clara, Bernard, and Joachim, as well as another Mary (a relative on his mother’s side), living in the town of Souris.   His father is a Preventive Officer in the Department of Customs. Joachim is 3.  All the children were born in PEI.

In 1901 they still live in the same place; his  father is a boat agent.  Also in the household adopted daughter Mary Gillis. Joachim is 14.

By 1910 Joachim has moved to New York with his brother Bernard, they are both living in Manhattan, at  242  West 24^th Street,  and both working as carpenters. Bernard had moved to NY in 1904, and Joachim had followed in 1908 (when he would have been 20 or 21 years old).

His brother Bernard married and settled in Boston, as did his sister Clara. 

Joachim must have traveled to the U.K. between 1910–1914, possibly when war was declared, although no passenger list can be found. He enlisted in Liverpool in the 20^th Battalion of The King’s Liverpool Regiment as Private 29154 and earned promotions, as the Medal Roll shows him as Acting Sergeant.  In July 1916 the 20^th Bn took part in the fighting during the Battle of the Somme. On 10/07/1916, the day Joachim was killed, the battalion had proceeded from Trigger Wood Valley to Maricourt the night before, completing the move by 3:30 a.m., to relieve the 2^ndRoyal Scots Fusiliers in recently captured trenches. Joachim was killed in action, aged 28. His body was not recovered and his name is recorded on the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme.

The Thiepval Memorial, the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, bears the names of more than 72,000 officers and men of the United Kingdom and South African forces who died in the Somme sector before 20 March 1918 and have no known grave. Over 90% of those commemorated died between July and November 1916.

On 01st August 1932 the Prince of Wales and the President of France inaugurated the Thiepval Memorial in Picardy. The inscription reads: “Here are recorded the names of officers and men of the British Armies who fell on the Somme battlefields between July 1915 and March 1918 but to whom the fortune of war denied the known and honoured burial given to their comrades in death.”

The murderous fighting that went on inside Trones Wood rendered it impossible to put specific dates on some of the casualties. The conditions are best described in the following passage from Everard Wyrall’s book The History of The King’s Regiment (Liverpool) Volume II;  

The remembrance of Trones Wood in July 1916 to those who passed through it is of a noisome, horrible place, of a tangled mass of trees and undergrowth which had been tossed and flung about in frightful confusion by the shells of both sides. Of the ghastly dead which lay about in all directions, and of DEATH, lurking in every hole and corner with greedy hands ready to snatch the lives of the unwary. The place was Death trap, and although the attacks were made with great determination,   the presence of snipers who could not be detected and often fired into the backs of our men made the clearing of the wood impossible.

The Medal Roll shows that his 1914-15 Star was returned, with the next of kin not traced. 

Joachim is commemorated in Canada’s First World War Book of Remembrance.

Effects went to his father Bennett B. and sister Clara MacPherson, Boston, Mass.

We currently have no further information on Joachim John McEachern. If you have or know someone who may be able to add to the history of this soldier, please contact us.